


Ghostscape: The House on the Hill

by LunaMoth116



Series: Ghostscape Stories [1]
Category: Psionic Games
Genre: Creepypasta, Disturbing Themes, Gen, Haunted Houses, Horror, Mystery, POV First Person, Paranormal Investigators, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-21
Updated: 2014-11-21
Packaged: 2018-02-26 12:00:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2651273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunaMoth116/pseuds/LunaMoth116
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A paranormal investigator - <i>not</i> ghost hunter, thank you - explores a mysterious, decrepit house, and finds far more than was bargained for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghostscape: The House on the Hill

**Author's Note:**

> _I...really don’t know where this came from. While I enjoy creepy stories, I’ve never wanted to try my own hand at them. All I can tell you is that I’ve been a fan of Psionic’s creepy Flash games for many years - since college, at least - and when I saw on his site (psionic3d.co.uk) that he was accepting fiction submissions based on them, the protagonist’s voice started speaking in my head, and the rest of the story just started to write itself… You know how these things go._   
>  _Big thanks to Psionic, both for creating the game that inspired this story (as well as many other excellent games) and for reading this story! :) Play the game[here](http://www.kongregate.com/games/Psionic3D/ghostscape), and try some of his others while you’re at it. Also thanks to John Boswell, for composing [“Monsters of the Cosmos”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7e5-0t0pTF0), which most of this was written to. Check out Symphony of Science if you haven’t already!_

_“I don't believe that ghosts are ‘spirits of the dead’ because I don't believe in death. In the multiverse, once you're possible, you exist. And once you exist, you exist forever one way or another. Besides, death is the absence of life, and the ghosts I've met are very much alive. What we call ghosts are lifeforms just as you and I are.”_

_~ Paul F. Eno,_ Footsteps in the Attic

I don't know why I'm writing this down. I deal mainly in the visual, not the verbal, and words have never come to me easily, whether spoken or written. It's part of the reason I chose my profession; the people I work with can no longer speak, at least not in words anyone in this world can understand, and I've no need to speak to or even for them, which I'm quite happy about. But the house I've just come from, the things I've just seen...I can't seem to keep it to myself. I've no priest or partner to confide in, and with my job, I'll never have either. So I might as well write about it, if for no one other than myself, just to get it out of my mind and into the world, and maybe I'll finally be able to sleep again. In the day, that is. I haven't slept at night in years, not since I was much, much younger in both body and mind.

I suppose by now you're wondering what exactly it is I do for a living - if what I do really constitutes as such. I might as well say it upfront: I'm a paranormal investigator.

Before you start laughing, forget everything you've seen on TV. Forget your _Ghost Hunters_ , your _Most Haunted_ , your _Othersiders_. Forget your crappy, suspiciously low-res “REEL GHOST EVIDENCE PLZ WATCH” YouTube videos. You've seen them all, seen them roundly and rightly mocked, perhaps even done so yourself. What you haven't seen, and never will see, is what this job _really_ entails: lots of hard, frequently dangerous work with little profit beyond, if you're lucky, spiritual (haha) and skeptical satisfaction. You won't see the equipment I use featured on any of those low-budget, high-boredom shows; it's far too sophisticated and practical for their producers' tight wallets and tiny minds. You won't see the evidence I've collected profiled on the Fox Network – only mockeries of it, presented either brilliantly as fiction or boldly as fact.

You'll never have to see the things I've seen, know the things I know about this world and the next. Consider yourself lucky.

Are you still laughing? Maybe. I wouldn't blame you. But are you more willing to listen now? Good.

Maybe I am something of a writer, after all.

It started, as most of my jobs do, with rumors. There was a house, on a hill, recently condemned and supposedly haunted. Several murders had occurred there in years past. The locals I spoke with all said they'd been hearing strange sounds coming from the place lately, particularly at night. I didn't do much research beyond that, so as not to bias my investigation. All I needed was probable cause, and the facts of the murders plus the whispers of the locals were enough.

We'll get to the research I eventually did later.

It was a dark, cloudy night when I came to the house on the hill, distant flickers of lightning from a coming storm flashing in the distance. Such a cliché, all of it. The first thing that struck me when I approached the property was just how old and decayed everything looked. Property records had indicated the house had been around since at least the mid-14th  century, and it certainly looked like it. There wasn't a single sign of life to be found at first glance, nowhere between the rotting roof and skeletal yard.

No sign of _natural_ life, that is.

Two massive gargoyles with menacing grins guarded either side of the boarded front door. A slightly rusty crowbar leaned against one of them; clearly I wasn't the only one who'd been curious lately. I picked up the crowbar and made quick work of the boards; you might not think so, but it's important to be strong and fit in my line of work. I stowed the crowbar in my bag beside my flashlight, thinking it would come in handy. Taking a deep breath, I steadied myself and went inside.

I'd just stepped across the threshold when the door slammed shut behind me.

Instinctively, I whirled around and grabbed for the doorknob. No matter how much I tried, it wouldn't budge! I stopped for fear of accidentally breaking it and took a deep breath to calm myself. There might be a key somewhere in the house...there had to be. If not – well, it wasn't as if one more smashed window would make a difference to the property value.

A moist chill grazed the hairs on the back of my neck. I knew that feeling all too well, and kept my composure as I switched on the camera around my neck. I whirled on my heel with my finger on the button and pressed it the instant I felt the air begin to cool. The flash exploded in front of my eyes and a haunting moan filled the air as the shutter clicked. As the light faded, I saw cockroaches scrambling away as if they’d been struck, the skittering of their tiny legs barely audible over the whistling wind and loud creaks of the settling floor.

I quickly lowered the camera and looked at the picture I’d taken. Captured in various spectrums was the image of a spirit, descending the rotting steps in front of me; it seemed to be a woman, for her white hair and dress flowed behind her like the billowing sails of a ship at sea. She had no features to speak of, barely even a form. Who was she? What had happened to her?

If nothing else, capturing evidence of her - it - whatever - had made her disappear. For now.

A loud scraping to my left caught my attention. I turned to see a chair moving on its own across the wooden floor. Poltergeist activity. Why poltergeists seemed to get such kicks out of simply making a mess or just moving objects around, I would never understand. Quickly, I snapped a picture; my camera would capture the movement in several visible and non-visible spectrums, ready for lab analysis.

Apart from the wind and creaking, the only other sounds were the quiet buzzing of flies circling in the air, seemingly drawn to the dried bloodstains splattered along the floors and walls. I looked around, camera firmly in hand, and photographed a white orb that appeared from the doorway, bobbing along as innocently as a firefly. It was no danger to me, merely a lost soul passing through, and valuable evidence of supernatural activity, as if I hadn’t already had enough of that in spades. A strange painting of what seemed to be a moaning spirit hung by the stairs; I took a picture, wondering why it hadn’t been stolen by looters long ago. Then again, it wasn’t exactly the kind of thing you would be able to sell, or display over your mantel. The only sources of light apart from my flashlight were flickering candles displayed in torches or on tables around the hallway; I could see more candles in other rooms as well, at least in those off to either side of the hall. I didn’t know who kept them lit, and I didn’t want to know.

A diary page on the floor caught my attention. I picked it up; it was dated June 27, 1973. The author was an unnamed woman, presumably the new wife of a man named Jason, chronicling their move into the house, the strange noises she heard coming from the attic, and her lack of knowledge about her husband’s past. I shook my head as I carefully tucked the page away. Marrying someone whose past you knew little of - now _that_ was always a good idea. Not that I spoke from personal experience.

I moved to my left into the lounge, and took more photographs - of more strange paintings - including one whose eyes seemed to follow my every move and one of a werewolf - of more orbs, and of another chair moving on its own, as well as a cup moving across a table. I’d just barely put my camera down when red began to drip from the opposite wall.

As I grabbed for my camera, the red liquid began to coalesce and form into shapes, then letters, then words. I stared as the message appeared, only remembering to snap a picture just in time.

**WHY ARE YOU HERE?** the message demanded.

Clearly something - or several somethings - didn’t like my being in the house. Well, that made for at least two of us. I wasn’t planning on staying any longer than I had to. Get in, get the evidence, get out. There’s no other way to do it.

A strange knocking on the wall greeted my entrance into the study, in addition to the spirit that swooped at me the moment I crossed the doorway. This one was even more formless than the first, its mouth open in a silent scream and appendage-free arms raised over its head. One camera flash later and that problem was solved. When that picture was taken, another message in red began to blossom on the wall.

**LEAVE US ALONE.**

What had happened to them? What had disturbed them so much in life that they wanted to be left alone even in death? As my eyes fell to the floor, I had one answer.

A small book, probably not more than a couple hundred pages or so, lay on the floor. I swallowed hard as I picked it up. So the rumors were true. _The Book of Spirits_ was inscribed across the bound-skin cover in deep red, matching the “ink” the pages were written in. Flipping through it, the passages described how to contact the spirit world. I closed it and put it in my bag.

Let me give you all one bit of unsolicited advice. If you ever even entertain the idea of contacting the spirit world, even for just a moment, lock yourself in a dark room, with just a candle or two for light. Then splatter the walls with red paint, switch on the air conditioning, and play recordings of people’s terrified screams. That should permanently snap you out of it.

I moved on, continuing to explore the house carefully, stepping on cockroaches as I went. In the dining room, more moving cups and chairs were captured on film. More orbs drifted through the air, to be caught by my camera’s eye. A door, ripped from its hinges. There were other paintings as well, less disturbing than the others and clearly valuable, painted by well-known local artists. Why _they’d_ never been stolen was a mystery to me. Another message bloomed above the dining room table. I photographed all of this.

**COME AND JOIN US** , it said.

The spirits really couldn’t make up their minds, could they?

I shook my head. I was here to help. But though my aim wasn’t to defeat them, I would _never_ join them. I’m always ready to die, because I now know that while we have many choices in this life, how we leave it is seldom one of them. I will leave no unfinished business behind when my time comes. I will not torture others with my suffering - not now, not when I’m gone.

The kitchen turned up a ladder and another diary page, dated August 13, 1973. The entry scrawled on this one started out fairly harmless, as the writer described the many repairs Jason was making to the house, then took a stranger turn when she wrote about how distant he’d seemed and how he still refused to tell her anything. Had she no one in her life who could have told her to run, run, run, and never look back? Had they, and had she refused to listen?

I will never understand people, whether living or dead.

**WE WILL DEVOUR YOU** appeared above the kitchen table, as if in response. Appropriate enough for the kitchen, I suppose.

Going up the stairs, I saw three rooms - a bathroom and presumably two bedrooms. I decided to look in one of the bedrooms first - the one that was unlocked. There wasn’t much, beyond a few orbs and a gold ring topped with a green gem that bore a suspicious resemblance to the so-called “Ring of Insanity”, rumored to curse the wearer with hallucinations, paranoia, and violent tendencies. I was careful not to let it slip onto my finger as I placed it in an evidence bag. A strange chest, when forced open with a little help from the crowbar, revealed a key labeled “Cellar” and a red candle. Instinct told me to take both. The bathroom turned up nothing of interest apart from another red candle.

Perhaps the spirits were telling me where I ought to head next. As this thought occurred to me, another message appeared at the top of the stairs, just below the open trapdoor in the ceiling:

**GET OUT OF HERE**.

_I’m not disagreeing with you_ , I thought to myself as I headed down the stairs. But trying to truly communicate with them was an endeavor I never planned to pursue.

With the cellar door unlocked, I descended the stairs...and made my most startling discovery yet. An elaborate ceremonial dagger rested near a pile of bones! I quietly photographed them, biting my lip as I bagged the dagger, and tried not to think of how this poor person had reached their present condition. Who were they? Had their life ended on the point of this suspiciously clean blade? More than likely.

More photographs of orbs were taken and a third red candle was added to the bag. I reached for my crowbar, pulled off the boards covering the entrance to the cellar, and went down into the darkness.

My trusty flashlight was the only source of illumination, the beam almost solid in the thick dust in the air. The dirt crunched under my feet as I walked, as did the bones it nearly concealed. I photographed two more skeletal remains, and found a key labeled “Bedroom” resting near one of them, dusty and flaked with rust. I was just about to leave when I spotted a crumbling piece of paper by the stairs.

It was a third diary page, dated September 8th of 1973, and it took a darker turn than the previous two, as the writer’s scrawling became tighter and more frantic in her descriptions of catching her husband reading strange old books in the basement. I winced as I continued to read her account of further strange happenings in the house. “Leaking red fluid”? Really? Should that not have been a clue? I’ve never been one to say people deserve what they get, but…

No, I told myself. I mustn’t think like that. None of these people deserved what they got. And after so many years of working in this profession, sometimes I feel the same about myself.

Where was this couple? I wondered, though a sinking feeling told me I wouldn’t have to wait long to find out.

It was almost a relief to leave the cellar and return to the front hallway - I say “almost” because I still hadn’t found the front door key. At least I could now open the other bedroom.

No more messages, moving objects, spirits, or orbs revealed themselves to my camera; perhaps they were getting the hint. I unlocked the second bedroom slowly, cautiously...and nothing jumped out at me. I allowed myself a quick sigh of relief, but none of the tension was released from my body. I knew it wouldn’t leave until I was out of this house and far, far away. But I would be damned if I didn’t finish what I had started.

A quick search turned up a key labeled “Pantry” and a mysterious golden amulet, its round and elaborate design surrounded by what might have either been spikes or sunbeams, depending on how you looked at it. Its center was filled with a small amount of blood - whose? I couldn’t wait to get back to the lab and find out. Even without running a single test, I doubted it was mere chicken blood.

You _really_ don’t want to know about my experiences with chicken blood.

Moving the bed to check behind it revealed another diary page. This page, from October 12, 1973, was mysteriously stained with red around the edges. The author’s slipping grasp on her sanity and growing fear of her husband were palpable, far easier to grasp than anything else I’d encountered in this house. I almost felt sorry for her and the torment she had gone through.

Almost. In some ways she’d been far luckier than I.

The only other items of interest were two wardrobes. Forcing one with my trusty crowbar revealed nothing. The other, however, gave way easily to a simple tug…

A loud scream tore through the air, and I didn’t know to whom it belonged.

I don’t know how I managed to grab my camera and snap the picture of the spirit that threw itself at me from the wardrobe - a grinning skull, menace in its hollow eyes, dissolving like blown smoke as soon as my flash went off. Once I had caught my breath and my pulse had returned from somewhere in the stratosphere, I checked the wardrobe.

Nothing. Not even nothing of interest - just absolutely _nothing_. I stood there in stunned silence...and all I could do was give a small chuckle. I’d laugh about it later. Oh, I’d laugh, laugh until I was as out of breath as that damn skull had made me. Laugh until I had no more breath to give.

After all, you’ve never heard of a spirit who died laughing, have you?

With yet another key in hand, I returned to the kitchen and unlocked the pantry. Another orb and another moving cup were photographed. There was a trapdoor in the floor that I easily levered open with the crowbar. A ladder dropped down into the darkness. Well, I’d come this far, hadn’t I?

When I reached the bottom, I stopped and stared, realizing where I was. The cellar was far bigger than I had realized. Two more remains awaited discovery, in addition to another red candle...and one more diary page.

This page was dated October 29, 1973 - two weeks following the fourth page. This entry was the most disturbing of all; the writer was terrified of Jason by now, and the two were barely speaking. He had actually lashed out at her recently - though she didn’t go into detail as to how - and the house had only seemed to grow colder and creakier with each passing day. The entry ended with the following: “I hate him so much for hurting me! **I hate him!!** ”

I had a feeling that would be the last page I’d be finding in this house.

With page and photographs taken, I scrambled up the ladder as quickly as I could and pulled the door shut once I was out. Everywhere - I had looked everywhere, and there had been no sign of the front door key. I reached for the crowbar, contemplating where was the best window to break. The hallway, the kitchen, an upstairs window if I had no choice…

Wait. That wasn’t true. I hadn’t looked everywhere. I’d barely noticed it between the messages, the orbs, and everything else this house had thrown at me, but there was one last place I hadn’t explored.

The attic.

Quickly, I glanced around the kitchen and spotted the ladder I’d seen earlier. Grasping it in both hands, I managed to ease it through the doorway and carefully up the stairs. Grunting, I positioned it beneath the door in the ceiling of the landing. After making sure it was steady, I steeled my nerves and prepared to climb.

Darkness greeted me at the top of the ladder. A quick sweep with my flashlight revealed a pentagram drawn in red on the floor, four of its five points dotted with drips of age-old wax. A fifth red candle sat at the farthest point, waiting to be lit. I didn’t know what would happen if I completed the design, but what did I have to lose by trying?

Curiosity, I told myself. That’s why I was going to do it. Yes.

With the remaining four candles placed, I pulled a lighter from my bag and lit all of them. Strangely, the flames glowed _red_ , not orange or yellow as I would have expected. A moment passed; then, just as I was about to head back downstairs -

She appeared! The same spirit that I had seen when I first entered the house, or at least one that looked just like it. A keening cry hurt my ears and an icy draft made me shudder as she swooped towards me; then, as I snapped her picture, she vanished into thin air. As my vision cleared, I saw that in the center of the pentagram was a key.

Trembling just a little, not daring to hope, I cautiously approached and picked it up, as a chorus of high-pitched wails began to sound again.

“Front Door” read the label.

Exhilarated, exhausted, and just plain eager to go, I didn’t bother to blow out the candles as I began to back down the ladder. The moans and cries died in my ears as I returned to the landing and scrambled down the steps.

I don’t know what she wanted from me, or why she let me go. I don’t know if she was in charge of all the other spirits haunting the house, or if she was just the most merciful. I don’t know any of it. I only know what I documented, and I’m not prepared to speculate on that. There’s no room for guesswork or conjecture in what I do, ephemeral as the nature of what I study is. And odd as it may sound, I’ve learned to accept that.

As I opened the front door, welcoming the rush of cool breeze to my face, blowing away all the dust and grime that had coated me like a second skin during my explorations, my eyes fell to the porch. And what I saw startled me even more than the wardrobe ghost had.

A newspaper page, crinkled and yellow, but still legible, was lying in front of the door. Despite the breeze, it was barely fluttering, though it wasn’t weighed down by anything.

I gulped. It hadn’t been there when I’d arrived.

Without taking my eyes off my surroundings, I reached down and picked it up. Well, no spirit rushed out to greet me. Good sign.

The newspaper page was dated October 31, 1973. Unsurprisingly, I suppose… Below a large photograph of the house were two brief articles about orbs spotted in the graveyard and upcoming Halloween celebrations. But what grabbed my eye was the article to the right of the photo, and the headline that screamed: “WOMAN MURDERS HUSBAND IN COLD BLOOD, THEN HANGS HERSELF.”

I skimmed the article. The police had found both their bodies in the house, hers hanging from the rafters in the attic. Neither was named. Evidence suggested it had been a murder-suicide, as the headline said - particularly the woman’s diary, which had documented her growing paranoia over her husband’s behavior in previous months. The police had been reluctant to investigate further due to the instability of the house, both rumored and real.

And I now shared their sentiments.

I crammed the paper into my bag, not even caring if I tore it in my haste, and looked up, forcing myself to take deep breaths as howls began to echo behind me.

I could barely see anything in the darkness, my eyes still adjusting from the candlelight. But the inky void of _nothing_ was the sweetest sight I had laid eyes on in a long time. I ran away from there as fast as my legs could carry me, for the sake of my sanity as much as my safety, and I never looked back.

See why it's important for paranormal investigators to be fit?

The following day, with all my evidence stashed in a secret, secure location to await analysis, I went to the library to learn more. Several hours of research later, I had some of the answers I sought. Historical records indicated the house had, in centuries past, been a makeshift hospital during the Black Death, and later an insane asylum called “Old Bedlam”. Lastly, the newspaper article from the porch was genuine. No further details about the 1973 deaths surfaced in subsequent papers, however.

Surprisingly, once word of my investigation began to get around, and the analysis of the evidence I had found was published, local historians started to take more interest in the house and its dark past, and began their own research and inquiries, though theirs were of a much safer and more mundane nature than my own. The local paper has started running a series of articles detailing the house’s history (I’ve not read any of them) and the town council is currently weighing whether to raze it or attempt to restore it for its historical value. Of course, the local paranormal society is trying to persuade the council to restore the house for “ghost tours”, and the local church is in favor of exorcism. You can guess whose side I’m on.

Strangest of all, having written all this down, I feel better now. It's out there now for the world to learn about, for others to see it as I do, and I take an odd comfort in knowing that, at least in this respect, I am no longer alone. Perhaps I might even sleep tonight, my trusty camera by my side in case a wayward spirit tries to disturb my rest. But I know I will still see it no matter how tightly I close my eyes, no matter how deep my slumber. I see it even now, dark and decaying, ancient and abandoned, the house on the hill.


End file.
